Cameron pledges the UK to a war without end and without meaning

A comment made by the Prime Minister recently left me feeling poleaxed, and upon reading it I felt like rubbing my eyes and dousing myself in cold water to ensure that I was awake. Surely he could not have uttered the following sentence and believed in the substance of the words that he was enunciating with respect to the recent hostage crisis in Algeria:

What we face is an extremist, Islamist, al-Qaeda-linked terrorist group. Just as we had to deal with that in Pakistan and in Afghanistan so the world needs to come together to deal with this threat in north Africa.

What does he mean by stating “had to deal with”? By using these words he seems to imply that the problem there has been solved. Has it? What has been achieved in Afghanistan? How has the problem been dealt with in Pakistan? Has the Islamist problem been solved in either country, or even here in the UK? Quite clearly, the answer must be no. Our intervention in Afghanistan may have eliminated al-Qaeda training camps, but what in reality has it achieved? When our forces leave that country after well over a decade of death, mutilation, psychological trauma and the expenditure of billions of pounds, what will we see? A prosperous Afghanistan friendly to the UK advocating freedom of opinion and expression for its citizens, together with respect and equal rights for its women, or a jubilant Taliban-dominated theocracy celebrating victory over the infidel, just as antipathetical to the UK and the West in general as it was in 2001 and imbued with a spirit of vengeance? It would seem that the second scenario would be far closer to what emerges than the former one.

A decade on from invasion and its subsequent occupation Iraq remains a religiously and ethnically cleft violent wreck. The Arab Spring, encouraged by the UK Government, has led to increased instability across North Africa and the Middle East, with Islamists playing a major role in the popular uprisings and in the new administrations that have emerged following the toppling of the old regimes. Cameron and Hague were keen to intervene in Libya, and have been chomping at the bit to do the same in Syria, irrespective of the chaos and geopolitical blowback that such meddling can produce. It has been widely claimed that the post-Qaddhafi instability in Libya has helped to flood parts of North Africa with weaponry, assisting an upsurge in violent Islamist militancy that has manifested itself both in the ongoing attempt to overthrow the Malian government as well as in the recent Algerian hostage crisis.

The Prime Minister’s call for a “global response” to what he dubs the “al-Qaeda” threat is thoroughly wrongheaded. Islamism existed before Bin Laden and it will exist long after his passing. Islamism, in one form or another, is as old as Islam itself, and until that ideology dies we will always have a problem with its violent fanatics wishing to impose their crude, vicious and misanthropic ideology upon everyone else: non-literalist Muslims and non-Muslims alike. What, after all, does Cameron mean when he states that:

It requires a response that is patient and painstaking, that is tough but also intelligent, but above all has an absolutely iron resolve and that is what we will deliver over these coming years.

Perhaps the Prime Minister should steer clear of reference to “iron” to denote resolve, for we all now how brittle his “cast iron” guarantee proved to be with respect to an EU membership referendum. Is he committing us to an endless series of wars in which we fight with our hands tied behind our backs, bereft of either a clear goal or modus operandi? If so, who will die and who will pay for this policy? What benefit will it bring and to whom?

It would appear that the immense corrupting wealth of the Saudis and the other Arab petrodollar states of the Gulf has effectively muzzled politicians such as Cameron. The fountainhead of Islamism today, in both its violent and political variants, is Saudi Arabia. Find an effective alternative to oil, and the Saudis’ malign and growing influence would collapse. Thus, to find such an alternative should be one of our key political and economic tasks. The Saudis produce nothing of value other than what they pump out of the ground, with the rest of their wealth being derived from parasitic investment around the globe. If Cameron truly wished to wage war to destroy Islamism he would call for the subjugation and occupation of the Arabian Peninsula, but to be ‘successful’, that sort of war would call forth the logic of total war witnessed in the horrific brutality displayed by both sides on the Eastern Front with its associated exterminist logic. Who wants such a war? Not me. I would prefer the option of the peaceful development of viable alternative energy sources and the concomitant undermining and collapse of the economic, political and cultural influence of the Arab petrodollar states. Only then will we stand a chance of defeating Islamism.

Cameron and Hague are intellectual lightweights, and if they truly wished to root out Islamism they could make no better start than by rooting it out at home, for after all, they and their political predecessors in the Labour Party have allowed it to flourish in Britain. They may as well launch drone strikes on Tower Hamlets and Bradford as upon Pakistan, for there is not a great deal to differentiate the two environments other than an increasingly nominal sovereignty. As it is, the two men seem intent upon poking their noses into as many Islamist hornets’ nests as possible, with Syria and Mali looking like our most probable forthcoming entanglements.

Such interventions will be pointless, bloody, expensive and ineffectual. Moreover, they will generate ever-greater resentment against us, no matter how ill founded, by Muslims around the globe. At the same time, Cameron, Hague and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office will continue to push for the economic and eventual political integration of the countries of the Middle East and North Africa into an expanded EU, arguing that this is ‘necessary’ to disseminate economic prosperity throughout the Arab world and thereby undermine support for Islamism. This is the eventual goal of Euromed, but in reality what it would achieve, if its logic were to be fully enacted, would be for every state in the EU to be flooded by a massive demographic wave from the Muslim states of the eastern and southern Mediterranean littoral, bringing economic and cultural decline to Europe, as well as the demographic eclipse and eventual disappearance of the European peoples. Alas, a twin combination of cack-handed interventionism and half-baked policies on economic integration are likely to be the favoured response of the current Government. It is a grim prospect, but we can expect only support for such a policy from an intellectually bankrupt Labour Party. Where is the effective opposition? Who will articulate the much-needed alternative?

Cameron pushing for intervention in Syria?

It would seem almost superfluous to note that the situation in Syria is very ugly, but irrespective of the complexities and the relative ‘rights’ and ‘wrongs’ articulated by different elements within the pro- and anti-regime camps, the civil conflict in that country is not our conflict, and we have no business in becoming embroiled in it. Nonetheless, there has for quite some time been a clear eagerness on the part of leading members of our Government – as exemplified by William Hague in particular – to get involved in some fashion, by lending assistance of one form of another to ‘the rebels’, despite the significant if not leading role played by jihadists within this opposition.

Assad is far from being a saint of course, but what do Hague and the policy makers at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office realistically anticipate will replace him and his regime? One thing is for certain: it will not be a Western-style liberal democracy. As elsewhere in the Arab world where unrest has led to the toppling of long-established regimes over the past couple of years, the most likely outcome is an Islamist government, and as events in Egypt are demonstrating, this is unlikely to produce a system of consensual governance based upon equality before the law for all of its citizens. Members of Syria’s Christian population may look at the position of Egypt’s Copts, and therein divine the sort of future that they can expect to face.

A report in today’s Guardian states that David Cameron has asked for plans to be drawn up ‘for maritime or air support to rebels’, but with the proviso that such support would only be rendered in the event of the US also intervening in the Syrian conflict. However, this request is reported as generating unease amongst our chiefs of staff, who have drawn parallels with the pressure brought to bear by Cameron in the lead-up to the intervention in Libya, but note that in the case of Syria, the situation would be ‘very different’ owing u/ &e s%)`army’s much stronger ground-to-air missile capability. Hague, in wishful and myopic fa{hnog prZ)sts in constructing a fantasy Syrian opposition which he hopes, according to the Guardian, will ‘unify around a coherent programme built on respect for human rights and ethnic tolerance.’

The tide appears to have turned against the Assad regime, but what comes next should be left up to the Syrians themselves. Intervening because of the feeling that ‘something should be done’, is not a valid reason for doing so. If we were to intervene, it would generate one sort of resentment or another, and may not lead to an outcome that we would find desirable.

The Politics of the eternal Mirage

The Conservatives will bring us a referendum over EU membership! The Conservatives will scrap the Human Rights Act! This, so the Daily Mail and Telegraph would have you believe, is what is going to happen. Really? David Cameron gave his “cast-iron” guarantee that we would be allowed a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, and the Conservatives in office have pledged to cut immigration to the UK to “the tens of thousands”. What happened? You know well enough: no referendum over Lisbon, and the first year of the Conservative Liberal Democrat Coalition witnessed an increase in net immigration to the UK.

The Daily Mail’s near-hysterical jubilation over an announcement that there would be a debate in the House of Commons over whether or not to hold a referendum on EU membership would have the reader think that the UK’s withdrawal from the emergent superstate was a done deal. Quite clearly, it is not, for other than the miniscule cross-party ‘Better off out’ group (despite its title, it should not be confused with anything to do with Peter Tatchell’s hobbyhorse) in the Commons, who is there who would wish to ‘risk’ the public expressing its desire to leave the EU? Next to nobody. Both William Hague and David Cameron have been quick to stress their belief in the benefits of EU membership. The reality is, the only elements of the EU which they would like to see removed are those which accord some form of protection to people in low-paid and precarious employment. 

Theresa May says that she supports scrapping the HumanRights Act. This is about as meaningful as Obama saying that he supports a manned mission to Mars. Both May and Obama feel favourably predisposed towards these eventualities, but both know that they don’t stand a chance of coming about whilst they’re in office. Whereas the prospects of a manned Mars mission are held back by a combination of an absence of financial resources, an ailing NASA and a lack of real political will, the repeal of the Human Rights Act is blocked by the visceral opposition of the Liberal Democrats. Any move to jettison the act could put the Coalition in jeopardy, and that is why it is going to stay in force.

Thus, in an effort to portray the Conservative Party in a favourable light, both the Mail and the Telegraph have in effect run two ‘non-stories’ over the past week, tapping into the frustrated desires both of typical Tory voters and of the wider British public. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Conservative talk about these matters and its reporting in the slavishly obedient Tory press should thus be perceived as nothing more than populist mood music intended to improve the image of the Conservative Party rather than being indicative of any actual intent, let alone impending political action. This, naturally, is highly cynical and what we have correctly come to expect of the careerist politicians in our mainstream political parties. This is the politics of the eternal mirage: the mirage of democracy.

Is the Conservative Party a nationalist party? No. Is the Conservative Party a patriotic party? No. Is the Conservative Party the cod-British façade of globalist financial oligarchy? Yes!

David Cameron’s Russian Lessons

How the Russians, not normally renowned for their mirth, managed to keep straight faces when David Cameron attempted to speak their language at the start of his visit to their country, it is hard to fathom. He executed (a most appropriate term in this context) the delivery in such a fashion as to render it nigh on incomprehensible to a native-English speaker with a pretty good grasp of Russian. I have a feeling that the famous ‘That’s Life’ speaking dog, renowned for saying “sausages”, could not have been any less comprehensible. It was as if some foreign dignitary visiting England were to place himself proudly before the assembled representatives of the mass media and say “ooee lugf oor cuntrow. Digevva ooee ah stwonga.” Actually, I can’t remember what Cameron said in Russian (it was rather hard to take in, or indeed to decipher), or the English translation that usefully followed, but it did involve the word “digevva” (sorry, that should be “together”).

Thus, Cameron’s visit to Russia started how it would proceed: embarrassingly. He and his team had arrived in Moscow carrying the conviction that these Russian Johnnies were jolly indecent chaps, and needed a good talking to about such things as human rights and dealing with corruption (strangely, I don’t recall British governmental delegations to Saudi Arabia behaving in such a manner or raising these issues). David and Willie Hague looked dreadfully cross, and chastised their hosts about their disgraceful behaviour.

Dave appeared to strike up a reasonable rapport with amiable Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, but as for Putin, the once-and-future Tsar (sorry! Meant to say “President”), he exuded all the warmth of a tank of liquid nitrogen. The body language and facial expressions in the video below display the reality of the power relationship between the Russian and British governments: a contemptuous Putin, bored and seemingly a little irritated at the need to exchange diplomatic pleasantries with the Cameron administration; Cameron and Hague discomfited, looking submissive and slightly afraid. Russia may be an ailing great power, but it is still a state with massive reserves of natural resources and an enormous military machine. It will have a role to play in the geopolitical future, whereas the UK . . . what of it? Are not its leaders intent on continuing our drawn-out process of national suicide?

David Cameron ‘revealed’ that he had been approached by theKGB whilst on a trip to the Soviet Union in 1985, perhaps with a view to him becoming a spy. However, it would appear that the latter decided that the future Bullingdon boy’s lack of linguistic aptitude, as well as his ignorance of social conditions in England, rendered him useless to their aims. So, I suspect that so far as the Russian elite goes Dave, it’s not so much “do svidaniya” as “proshchaite!”

“No, I want to go to Europe”

So responded a man to a Radio 4 interviewer who asked him whether he wished to remain in Libya or go to Europe. From the manner in which the question was framed and the response received, one could be forgiven for thinking that the interviewee was a native of the named continent, for why else would the interviewer pose the question in the form of a choice between Libya or ‘Europe’ (by which one assumes he meant the EU)? In fact, that proved not to be the case, for the man was a migrant worker from Nigeria. Knowing this to be so, why did not the interviewer instead enquire “Do you and other migrant workers intend to stay in Libya, or return home?”

That the interviewer should have posed the question in this way displays, yet again, the wearisome bias of BBC journalists, who appear intent upon reducing England to an ethnically and culturally balkanised ‘global village’ in miniature, populated predominantly by non-indigenes. Although such an eventuality may be viewed in indulgent soft-focus by BBC staff and the multiculturalists of our main political parties, this represents an emergent dystopian rather than utopian future, although of course, it would literally result in England becoming a ‘utopia’, that is, a ‘nowhere’.  The human lineaments of this ‘nowhere’ are already becoming clearly defined in what was once London. It is up to you, dear reader, to help ensure that in future we do not wistfully refer to what was once England.

The thousands of sub-Saharan migrants who worked in Libya under Gaddafi did so in a variety of capacities, many working for the regime during its dying days as mercenaries. Some of the latter have been implicated in atrocities; others of course, will have been entirely innocent of such wrongdoing. Irrespective of the roles that these migrants fulfilled, for ill or for good, they are no longer welcome in Libya. Where they will head has already been indicated, and as a good proportion of them hail from Anglophone states such as Nigeria, we must expect a surge in ‘asylum’ applications and illegal immigration from this source, which will be accompanied by hard lobbying from various advocacy groups in the UK.

One of the most vocal groups will consist of their ethnic kin who have already established settlements in England in areas such as Peckham, who not unnaturally seek to augment their number within our shores. These will find support from specialist ‘human rights’ and ‘refugee’ organisations as well as from the BBC, the three main political parties and significant sections of the press. David Cameron and William Hague, having abused their control of the RAF to repeatedly bomb Libya, will no doubt seek to allow the ingress of these ‘refugees’ (in reality economic migrants) as a means of expiating their war guilt, which will be projected outwards onto the British people as a whole. “We”, they shall say, “have a duty to these people”. No, we do not.

Those who wish to see the death of England, and of European nations and peoples more generally, will welcome the influx of these sub-Saharan economic migrants, many of whom, by dint of their role in Libya, will be innately violent. Most of us however, will not, for we do not share the ethnically submissive lachrymose sentiments of the interviewer on this morning’s Today Programme. For us, the Libyan tragedy is not yet over, for its long-term repercussions have yet to be fully felt at home; repercussions moreover, which could be avoided altogether if only we had a government which adhered to what governments are supposed to do: to place the interests of those whom it purports to represent foremost.